Turkish

Sinan is passionate about literature and has always wanted to be a writer. Returning to the village where he was born, he pours his heart and soul into scraping together the money he needs to be published, but his father’s debts catch up with him… Read More »

The first feature to be written and directed by actor Muzaffer Ozdemir, best known for his
roles in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Small Town, Clouds Of May and Distant (for which he won
the Cannes Best Actor Award) Home (Yurt) is a beautifully composed meditation on
memories and a changing world. Dogan, a pessimistic and neurotic architect, longing for his
homeland, revisits the countryside of his childhood for the first time in many years. His
search for the familiar, however, is an elusive one and in this modern technological age he
quickly discovers that time which once stood still is now fleeting, and that the tranquillity of
familiar landscapes is fading. Poetic and resonant, Home (Yurt) is a serene depiction of one
man’s journey to find his own sense of peace amidst the conflict between nature and the
ever intrusive modern age.Read More »

Kemal is a plainclothes policeman investigating a suicide whose face has been obliterated. He becomes obsessed with the real appearance of the dead man.Read More »

Ozan is a ten-year old boy living in a small coastal town on the Aegean. His friends make fun of him, calling him an “infidel” because his grandfather Mehmet is an immigrant from Crete. Ozan is afraid of being left alone. He gets angry at his family, especially his grandfather, and he stubbornly challenges his family saying “We are Turks”.

Mehmet Bey, Ozan’s grandfather, is a respected shopkeeper in the community. He takes the people of the town under his wings, and helps them with their problems. Mehmet Bey is known for his tolerance and his grandson’s attitude not only has him worried but grieves him as well.
Read More »

The first feature film written and directed by Tolga Karaçelik, better known for his award-winning short films such as Rapunzel, Toll Booth tells a story of miscommunication, isolation and desperate alienation via a conflict between a father and his son. Confined to his own world of dreams, introvert, and reticent, Kenan is a toll booth attendant, who lives with his ailing father. Kenan’s drab life stuck in routines between his toll booth and home will change the day a new manager comes for supervision. (~iksv.org)Read More »

What if a revolution will happen in Turkey? “After Revolution” is discussing ordinary, daily life just after socialist revolution in Turkey. (~IMDb)Read More »

Sumru is doing music researches at a university in Istanbul. To work on her thesis on gathering and recording an exhaustive collection of Anatolian elegies she sets off for the south-east of the country for a few months. The brief trip turns out to be the longest journey of her life. During the trip, Sumru crosses paths with Ahmet, a young guy who sells bootleg DVDs on the streets of Diyarbakir, with Antranik, the ageing and solitary warden of a crumbling church in the city and with various characters who witness the ongoing ‘unnamed war’. During her three-month stay in Diyarbakir, while she was looking for the stories of the elegies, she finds herself to confront an agony from her own past. (~IMDb)Read More »

Quote:
THE EYE OF ISTANBUL tells the story of Ara Guler, the legendary Armenian-Turkish photographer, through the culmination of his retrospective exhibition in Istanbul. The documentary follows a non-linear narrative, which explores the artistic process and impulses of this great master. Ara’s curiosity, resourcefulness and fearlessness are revealed through a series of stories in the film. At 87 years old, Ara is a complex and unforgettable character; he is still sharp, irreverent, funny and philosophical. Although he is mostly recognized for his black and white photographs of Istanbul, he has enjoyed an international career, which has spanned over sixty years and has generated more than one million photographs. A student and a follower of Henri-Cartier Bresson, Ara’s mastery lies in capturing the stories and interactions among people at the right moment in history.Read More »

The movie tells the story of a teacher who spends one winter in a mountain village of Hakkari, a city in the farest South-eastern vorner of the Turkey. Erden Kıral depicts his struggle for teaching Turkish to children who can only speak Kurdish and the loneliness of Zazi in a poetic way and also using the landscape as a further character. The screenplat is based on the novel by Ferit Edgü and adapted by Onat Kutlar with contributions from Tezer Özlü, another famous Turkish writer. The film was awarded with Silver Berlin Bear at 1983.Read More »